GAME ON

It's amazing how well a bullet to the ass motivates a man. After a drug lord refuses to pay for your mercenary work and shoots you in the ass on his way to becoming a Venezuelan dictator, you vow to rid the world of this fascist. Mercenaries 2 picks up right where its predecessor left off—in a hail of gunfire, vehicular mayhem, and crumbling buildings. As you pit rival political factions against one another in pursuit of revenge, your lucrative merc work will fund a military contracting business, allowing you to hire mercenaries to handle some of the dirty work. With dozens of heavily armed vehicles at your disposal, a massive arsenal, and the new co-op game-play mode, Mercenaries 2 is nothing short of explosive.

Sorry, NASCAR, the thrill is gone. Illegal street racing is where it's at. After all, who wants to drive in circles when you can weave a Lamborghini through traffic at 200 miles per hour and use on-ramps to jump over warehouses to the finish line? The latest in the Midnight Club series includes a dizzying array of customization options, including tires, rims, spoilers, and lighting effects. And, for the first time in the series, you can modify interiors, right down to the dashboard lighting. The rest of this open-world racer is packed to the rims with features, including day-to-night cycles and weather effects. And forget drilling through menus to start a race: Simply pull up alongside a car, flash your lights, and step on the gas.

Tiger may be taking it easy on a recovering knee, but the world's best golfer is still hitting the video game links. This year, Tiger brings his coach, Hank Haney, to help clean up your abysmal swing. As you make your way through the PGA Tour, he'll critique your performance, guide you through slumps, and recommend training for improving your weaknesses. Golf's true glory lies in competing with friends, and for the first time the game includes a simultaneous-play-mode. You and three friends can hit Pebble Beach online together to play the course at the same time. By ditching the turn-taking format of old, the game preserves all the fun of golf without the bore-inducing wait for your friend to shank his shot.

Here's a game geek cocktail: Mix Norse mythology with futuristic technology and create one hell of a mash-up game. The first installment in a planned trilogy, Too Human follows the plight of Baldur, the Norse god responsible for protecting humanity against robots gone wild. To stop the bloodthirsty machines you'll choose between relying on humanistic traits or piling on the technology. The game play blends the hack-and-slash combat of action games with the depth of a role-playing game to create a hybrid that is equal parts Devil May Cry and Diablo. Overrun with robots? Play Too Human's special blend of Rock 'Em Sock 'Em robots with three other people simultaneously online. —Matt Bertz

Time to get your war on. The Brothers in Arms series rejoins Staff Sergeant Matt Baker of the 101st Airborne as his squad fights to stay out of body bags during Operation Market Garden, the worst Allied defeat of World War II. Behind enemy lines in the Netherlands, Baker's squad must wrestle control of strategically important bridges, hold off the Nazi counterattack, and pray for reinforcements. This gritty story ditches heroics for the camaraderie formed by your squad during frantic firefights, exhilarating escapes, and painful losses. As the leader, your tactical decision-making spells the difference between a celebratory shot of scotch at a rally point or digging graves for your assault team.